Leading Change: When People Don't Know What They Don't Know Western culture likes to wave the "total participation" flag when it comes to business decisions and implementation. I've spent time in this series discussing the importance of involvement and erring on the side of inclusion. The assumption, though, is that people have some degree of willingness and ability to do what needs to be done to make the desired change. But what happens if people are unwilling, unable, or both? General George S. Patton who, while never accused of being warm, fuzzy, and participative, was successful by anyone's standards when it came to quickly making changes in the worst of circumstances. And the attrition rate in Patton's armies was the lowest despite the greatest level of exposure. The key was this: The average soldier may not have known what to do in an overwhelming situation and even if he did, the consequences might create a sense of hesitation due to uncertainty or fear. Patton did know what to do and how to do it. And he knew how to explain the benefits and consequences of action vs. inaction (if needed). Quickly assessing willingness and ability--then leading a myriad of changes and ...
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The old adage says life may not be fair, but that doesn’t mean your compensation program should follow suit with rote interpretations of an archaic bell curve spreadsheet and matrix approach. According to results from Hewitt's global compensation survey of more than 6,000 large companies in 46 countries, the trend is increasing for rewarding top performers with variable pay programs. WorldatWork’s Five Reasons to Focus on Pay Equity explains why it’s important to focus on fair pay: risk mitigation. It’s no longer just a matter of higher performance and retention of top talent, it’s the law. How is your company handling the issue? Aberdeen Group and Taleo are sponsoring the 2010 benchmark study on Employee Performance Management and Compensation. The report will allow your organization to benchmark performance management practices against your peers and best-in-class companies. Complete the survey and you’ll receive a complimentary copy of the final report. To learn more in the meantime, download Performance-Driven Compensation: The Corporate Talent Insurance Policy from Taleo Research. Link to original post ...
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Employee Engagement: No need to stay single! 
Define love. I am miffed at the criticism and pleas for a single definition of employee engagement. Often people dismiss the field because of a lack of a single definition. Do these same people dismiss love because of a lack of a single definition? Rich diversity. There is richness in the diversity of definitions. We get to see many angles and viewpoints on employee engagement from the robust business case and performance numbers to retention issues and workplace happy dances. What we need is more clarity about how people are using the term rather than forcing agreement on a single definition. Let’s argue. It is enriching to have conversations and disagreements — this is how employee engagement will mature and grow and branch out. We do not need a “one-trunk tree” of employee engagement devoid of branches. Operational clarity. What I would like to see is more operational definitions of the term so that when someone talks about employee engagement we can determine specifically what they mean. We can argue and quibble about the operational definition but we would at least have clarity about how engagement ...
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Employee engagement continues to be an issue for organizations. There’s constant conversation about being over-worked and under-paid. We all realize times have been tough but now is the perfect time to examine some of your processes to ensure your business remains healthy. A couple days ago, I wrote about on-boarding – the beginning of a person’s career. Today, let’s talk about the end of the employment cycle – exit interviews. Conducting exit interviews can be a valuable experience for any organization. Provided of course that the exit interview is done with proper planning and for the right reasons. If you’re doing exit interviews to get the heads-up on whether the departing employee plans to sue you and your company, well…that might be good to know but it’s not really the best use of an exit interview. The real reason businesses conduct exit interviews is to get information about an employee’s work experience with the company. This information could be valuable all on its own or used with other exit interview data. To gather relevant information, there are a few things to keep in mind when ...
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Professional Development Long-term professional development often involves working and growing with peers. The book Kitchen Confidential (Harper, 2001) by Anthony Bourdain describes how he become a professional chef and how he continues to support the community of professional chefs. No one issues membership cards to professional chefs but they are not difficult to recognize. They wear funny looking hats and white tunics. They carry a set of knives that no one else is allowed to touch. Their fingers bear scars from calling it too close with those knives When chefs travel, they meet with other chefs. They eat together. They share techniques. Were it not for this Sharing, we would not enjoy the broad, international array of foods on our tables (because chefs turned one another on to sources of exotic ingredients). When a top chef wants to move to a new job in a particular location, he tells a few chefs, the grapevine spreads the word, and within a week he has several job offers. In the book, Bourdain describes starting out as a dishwasher in a restaurant on Cape Cod. Then he lands a job as a fry cook. From that point on, the chef running the kitchen . ...
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When my family walked into the quiet Vietnamese restaurant, the hostess seated us adjacent to the only other occupied table, where a trio of diners in professional garb chatted, an air of formality hanging thick in the air between them. My HR radar immediately went into high alert. Using all my senses and intuition, I zoned in on the scenario unfolding behind my right shoulder while simultaneously carrying out everyday conversation with my family. A job interview maybe? This possibility was quickly crossed off as I picked up on tension between the parties. One diner was obviously the odd man out, and I heard him communicating that he was “very disappointed at a very personal level” that things had not transpired as he had been assured they would. Oooh, it was getting juicy! I was in heaven. This is the HR equivalent of a young man innocently sauntering down the street and accidentally looking up to see a girl undressing in front of a lighted window. He didn’t ask for this to happen; but here it is, unfolding before his eyes! What is he going to do, walk away? Although I am disguising the details, it appeared that two Board members were meeting with a ...
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"Every time someone’s laid off now, they need to start over,” says Gary Burtless, a labor economist with the Brookings Institute. And that’s exactly what thousands of unemployed workers are doing. But as a recent Wall Street Journal article pointed out, “retraining offers no quick fix,” while retraining may improve unemployed workers' long-term prospects, many are struggling to find work in the short term. High unemployment and even higher underemployment has created a deep pool of workers competing for the positions available. For many workers, training opens doors — but it doesn't necessarily shorten the job search. Although industries like health care and education are still growing and hiring, millions of workers are training to enter these fields. Applications keep piling up. Labor Department figures show there was one job opening for every 5.4 unemployed workers seeking work in January. That compares with about one opening for every two job seekers before the recession. Jobs and growth expert Tom Gimbel explains that what is happening now is no different than 100 years ago when workers who forged horseshoes had to learn to make tires. Gimbel, ...
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As America now arrives at the 2010 workforce crossroad, it is losing the global talent showdown. Over the past 25 years there has been a blizzard of business-sponsored white papers and special reports containing dire warnings on the economic consequences of a rising tide of high school dropouts, and the inadequate performance of too many local elementary and secondary schools. Inside the workplace business has largely failed to address its own internal rising tide of underskilled employees. A recent survey of U.S. companies regarding strategic workforce planning revealed that only 46 percent are doing anything. Some of the larger corporations have established specific initiatives to improve literacy, retrain classroom teachers, sponsor math and science contests, and offer scholarships to high-achieving students. A number of business-education partnerships have been formed in the United States and overseas that offer various forms of time commitments, talent, and monetary assistance to reverse the slide in skills and talent levels. As a consequence, some workers have been retrained, and some students have benefited from improved high school curricula and helped to reach ...
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Probably the first iPad in Switzerland:
High unemployment? Bah! The iPad has created these new job categories, according to Jennifer Jacobson, the witty publicist at Retrovo. The iPad au pair or “iPair”
Are you tired of “baby sitting” your iPad? After all, it does require a significant amount of attention. You can’t just set it down on the counter at Starbucks while you put creamer in your coffee, and you certainly can’t throw it into a handbag or “man-bag” as the case may be. You need a 24/7 iPad attendee, so why not consider an iPad Au Pair? Similar to traditional au pairs who serve as domestic child-care assistants living with host families, the iPad au pair or “iPair” is a technologically skilled Mac enthusiast who is invited to live with an iPad owning family, so long as they have their own room, a reasonable allowance in iTunes credits, and at least two full days a week off. The iPair’s duties include holding your iPad while you eat greasy foods like french fries or pizza, holding your iPad while you talk on your iPhone, holding your iPad while you’re driving, and holding your iPad while you take your kids to the park. iPad Smudge ...
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Well, I guess this wouldn’t be much of an ERISA blog if I didn’t put up a post about the Supreme Court’s decision in Conkright v. Frommert, on the question of whether an administrator continues to be entitled to deferential review when it has already had one interpretation of the challenged plan terms rejected by the court under that standard. Interestingly, coming on the heels of Glenn, the simple fact that the Court had accepted cert in the case suggested some type of change was in the offing for the standard of review, even if it was only incrementally with regard to the application of that standard of review in this type of a fact pattern. Otherwise, frankly, one could see no reason for the Court’s particular interest in the case. The Court, though, found no change to be warranted, and simply reinforced the basic themes of its main cases over the years related to this issue: that deferential review is to be applied, that lower courts are not to deviate from it on ad hoc rationales, and that deferential review is a necessary element of the balancing act between employee rights on the one hand and the need to encourage employers to provide benefit plans on the other. ...
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